The Canton advocate. [volume] (Canton, D.T. [S.D.]) 1877-1897, 1887-07-28
HARD WORKED NovELlsTs.
A Bookseller Thinks He Would Rattle
be a Laborer Than a Story Writer,

A Bookseller Thinks He Would Rather
be Laborer Than = Story Writer.
II believe would rather work on the
aqueduct than write books for living,
looking at it merely as a matter Of
manual labor" said Broadway book
seller, whose experience runs back a
quarter Of a century. ''Did you ever
think of what the labors of writing
merely moving the pen over the paper,
to say nothing of the mental strain
must be in writing an ordinary book?
Take novel like one of Mr.. Howell's,
for instance. 1t contains say $50 pages
with an average of 400 words to the
page, or 100000 words. How many
hours of composition do you suppose that
means? Well, 1,400 words an hour is
considered a pretty good gait even if you
know exactly what you want to say and
can clip along without stopping to study
construction. That would mean, at
least, under the most favorable circum-
stances imaginable, 100 hours Of writing.
Now few authors can compose steadily
more than two hours day. Supposing,
therefore, that the author knows exactly
what he wants to write every day and
can plow on without interruption, it
would take fifty days to grind out a
book like one of Mr.. Howells'. But
many authors have assured me that on
an average they write each book over
three times before they are satisfied to
leave it. When you consider, besides
this. that the labor of writing is, of
course, the merest trifle compared with
the other labors of authorship, you can
see that there is no picnic about it.
"When you think of all these things,
the amount of work done by some of our
leading novelists seems prodigious. There
is Miss Braddon, for instance. Her tire
less pen has already raced through fifty
complete works of fiction, and there is no
probability hope, some people might
say--that her supply will run short for
twenty years to come. Probably there
are 100000 printed words in these
books, and to write them her hand must
have Travelled over $4,000 or 10000
sheets of paper, even on the supposition
that she never tore up or rewrote q
sheet. Sixty thousand sheets of manu-
script paper would make pile as high as
this room. Supposing that Miss Braddon
labors under the same limitations as other
writers, she has probably written over
three or four such piles in the past fifteen
or twenty years. To do that is no joke,
can tell you. Yet there are othHrs who
have done nearly as much. The works
of The Duchess are numbered in the
forties The author of Dora Thorne has
written thirty-nine. Mr.. Black has writ
ten twenty five novels; Besant and Rice
n
Inns has published thirty-two. Dickens
works, including his sketches, collected
into volumes and the story that he wrote
with Wilkie Collins, make thirty-five
books. Nobody knows how many Miss
Holmes has turned out, but some persons
think there are 100 Of them at least.
Then look at the way Oliver Optic, Mrs.
Southworth and others have reeled out
story after story, year in and year out.
The man who makes any money with
his pen is no sluggard, you can be sure.
Hard as these writer's work, how
ever, the serial story writers for weekly
papers do much better (or worse) than
any of them. The serials they put forth
average about 10000 words in length.
One writer of this kind of trash made
$3, 200 from its production last year. He
received only $50 for each serial. Con.
sequently he must have written in =
single year twenty serials. or 1,2O0, 600
words-nearly ten times the quantity Of
matter produced in year by the most
prolific novelist. The late Ned Buntline
is said to have made $500, 900 by writing
this class of literature. To do SO he must
have ground out during his lifetime not
less than 100, 100000 words Of copy,
which means an almost incalculable
amount of labor that, devoted to almost
any other occupation, would have made
him millionaire. New York Mail
and Express.